As most of you know, as part of the Classroom Refurbishment Programme, the University upgraded the AV/IT equipment, furniture and other features in thirty seven rooms across five sites, over the Summer, after upgrading twenty two last year.

The Educational Technology Team ran six drop in sessions to show these rooms and give you a chance to use the equipment before the academic year started.

Thank you all very much for coming and getting in touch about the sessions and what’s new in the rooms. In all, we met with more than one hundred people across five sites and it was great to hear your questions, feedback and show you the flexible learning spaces.

Example of a new classroom: Regent Street: RS352

In case you couldn’t make it to one of the drop in sessions, here’s what we covered:

Brief overview of the Classroom Refurbishment Programme

Using the adjustable lectern and touch screen PC

Using the new control panel to set what is shown and the audio in the classroom

Thank you also for sharing your experience and ideas of teaching in the new flexible learning spaces. If you’re timetabled to teach in one of the rooms, members of the Educational Technology Team will be around to give you support and show you how to use the equipment during the first two weeks of term.

We would also love to hear from you if you attended a drop in session, would like more information about the equipment, or plan to use the new technology or collaborative furniture in your teaching.

You can get in touch with us by email here: blackboard-support@wmin.ac.uk.The Educational Technology Team wishes you and your students a good start of term.

During February and early March we collected feedback from student and staff visitors to the furniture exhibition held in the old bookshop at New Cavendish Street. Thank you to all who came and passed on their views. It has taken a while to collate and try to make some collective sense of the feedback but we have now done this and you can access the current version of the collated view via this link.

In short, finding something that everyone agrees was wonderful (especially chairs!) was perhaps unsurprisingly not possible. However, though the report goes in to much more detail for each item in the exhibition, after counting votes the top 6 of the ‘hit parade’ were (from left to right below) a folding table, a tablet chair on wheels, a 4 sided table (so called tessellating table), a 3 sided table (so called plectrum table), an upholstered basic chair, and (not too clear in the picture below) a table that can seat 6-8 but that has small whiteboards hanging from the sides that can be used to partition the table but also to facilitate group work feedback.

Please note that this doe snot necessarily mean that the furniture above will be what winds up in all classrooms being refurbished over the summer. The final choice of furniture is still to be discussed with Faculty representatives.

In order to find out your opinion about the depth of the new tables, we are questioning whether we should keep the tables as they are (600 mm), reduce them to 500 mm or to 400 mm. We need your help as we are trying to find the best solution in order to save space in the class room and also give enough space to students so they can have all the needed books or tablets placed on the table during the lectures.

Our exhibition consists of a multitude of tables, from teaching purposes to group work purposes. The most popular one is the group work table, as seen in the picture, it has a detachable white board which allows students to present their ideas in front of their team members by drawing or synthesizing the information in a more efficient and time consuming way.

From the Workday Four Leg Chair with Arms and Castors which is available in black, stone or white as standard to the green height adjustable chair, our furniture exhibition includes a wide variety of chairs from comfortable to more practical ones in terms of adjustment or storage.

Collection of feedback on the classrooms refurbished last academic year has indicated how important the choice of furniture is to both staff and students. Accordingly we are organising an exhibition of possible furniture options for staff and students to visit. Visitors can try the furniture in the exhibition and provide feedback which can then be used to inform the summer 2016 works.

The exhibition will open on the 8th February at 115 New Cavendish Street on the ground floor. Bear left as you come through the barriers and it is right in front of you.